In which I sense the zeitgeist. [+ update!]

Today I ran a piece in Haaretz in which I examine the fact that for many American Jews — maybe not the Famous Jews, but the ones who most often speak in whispers — the current war in Gaza is a huge stumbling block now standing between them and Israel, or (worse yet) them and their Judaism — and oddly enough, two Famous Jews also wrote today about the challenges they now face in that very same regard. I’ll blockquote them (Roger Cohen in The New York Times, and Jonathan Chait in The New Yorker), and then give you the top of my own piece.

I am a Zionist because the story of my forebears convinces me that Jews needed the homeland voted into existence by United Nations Resolution 181 of 1947, calling for the establishment of two states — one Jewish, one Arab — in Mandate Palestine. I am a Zionist who believes in the words of Israel’s founding charter of 1948 declaring that the nascent state would be based “on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel.”

What I cannot accept, however, is the perversion of Zionism that has seen the inexorable growth of a Messianic Israeli nationalism claiming all the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River; that has, for almost a half-century now, produced the systematic oppression of another people in the West Bank; that has led to the steady expansion of Israeli settlements on the very West Bank land of any Palestinian state; that isolates moderate Palestinians like Salam Fayyad in the name of divide-and-rule; that pursues policies that will make it impossible to remain a Jewish and democratic state; that seeks tactical advantage rather than the strategic breakthrough of a two-state peace; that blockades Gaza with 1.8 million people locked in its prison and is then surprised by the periodic eruptions of the inmates; and that responds disproportionately to attack in a way that kills hundreds of children.

This, as a Zionist, I cannot accept. Jews, above all people, know what oppression is. Children over millennia were the transmission belt of Jewish survival, the object of what the Israeli novelist Amos Oz and his daughter Fania Oz-Salzberger have called “the intergenerational quizzing that ensures the passing of the torch.” No argument, no Palestinian outrage or subterfuge, can gloss over what Jewish failure the killing of children in such numbers represents.

Netanyahu appeared on several occasions to approach the brink of agreement, but pulled back in the face of right-wing pressure within his coalition. Numerous figures in the story attempt to plumb the Israeli Prime Minister’s psychology — does he truly have it in him to go over the brink and make peace, or is he merely bluffing? — but the exercise turns out to be ultimately futile. Either Israeli politics or Netanyahu’s own preferences kept Netanyahu from striking a deal. And since that failure, the most moderate leadership the Palestinians ever had, and probably ever will have, has been marginalized.

Viewed in this context, the campaign of Israeli air strikes in Gaza becomes a horrifying indictment. It is not just that the unintended deaths of Palestinians is so disproportionate to any corresponding increase in security for the Israeli targets of Hamas’s air strikes. It is not just that Netanyahu is able to identify Hamas’s strategy — to create “telegenically dead Palestinians” — yet still proceeds to give Hamas exactly what it is after. It is that Netanyahu and his coalition have no strategy of their own except endless counterinsurgency against the backdrop of a steadily deteriorating diplomatic position within the world and an inexorable demographic decline. The operation in Gaza is not Netanyahu’s strategy in excess; it is Netanyahu’s strategy in its entirety. The liberal Zionist, two-state vision with which I identify, which once commanded a mainstream position within Israeli political life, has been relegated to a left-wing rump within it.

It’s hard to sketch an absence or reproduce a silence. It’s easier to report whispers, but those who whisper often seek anonymity. And anecdotes, of course, are not data.

Yet anecdotally, in whispers and off-the-record comments, in sudden Facebook defriendings or empty chairs at services, Israel’s most recent wave of hostilities appears to be leading to increasing alienation for a number of American Jews, despite the call for solidarity. For many of these members of our community, the sensation comes as a deep, identity-shaking shock.

3 Comments

ExpatJK

I’m just going to revise and repost 2 things here that I posted on another blog, since they are very much in the spirit of what you covered so well in your article:

It is depressing to watch the Diaspora Jewish communities blindly support said policies and then heap abuse on anyone who dares to critique these policies, even in the most mild manner. The discourse in the community about this, as well as the overall insularity and inability to admit other viewpoints, has me wondering how often I’ll bring my son in contact with other Jews as he grows up. Not in the sense that I would tell him to cross the street or that Jews are bad people since I’m not actually a self-hater, but in the sense that I don’t want him exposed to “everything the Israeli government does is right!” propaganda and lack of critical thinking.

-signed, your friendly kapo/Nazi fucker/self-hating Jew/anti-Semite (all things I’ve actually been called by other Jews when talking about this issue)

I was born Jewish, and I wouldn’t change that. My grandparents used to talk about how we would stay Jews because, if nothing else, we suffered so much for being Jewish. When I think about things today, it’s hard to imagine that bombing children and burgeoning theocracy are what we survived persecution for.

Lee Barron

I couldn’t read all of your article because I am not a subscriber. Bummed. Thanks for posting these pieces, I feel less guilty. The last few weeks have made my life-long support for Israel a heavy lift. This needs to stop. Those of us who have truly meant it when we thought “never again” must voice our discomfort. Even at the risk of being branded anti-Semitic.